I WAKE UP SCREAMING, by Steve...

I WAKE UP SCREAMING, by Steve Fisher (Vintage: $8). Written in 1941 and revised in 1960, this gumshoe novel offers an archtypical vision of the Hollywood studios in their heyday. The hard-boiled narrator is not a detective, but a successful playwright-turned-screenwriter with the unlikely monicker of Pegasus. When his girlfriend, a beautiful studio secretary he’s grooming to become a starlet, turns up dead, Pegasus finds himself trapped in a seamy cat-and-mouse game involving brutal cops, improbable Hollywood suspects, a vengeful police detective and an improbable twist of an ending. The book’s real appeal comes from the embittered descriptions of Tinseltown: A perpetually aspiring actress declares, “The only ones that care are the ones that eat dog food and live out their miserable lives here, hoping to hell they get a break. And if they get a break, they don’t care anymore. But some of us will always be extras and this is our lives.”

LETTERS FROM TOGO, by Susan Blake (University of Iowa Press: $12.95). A professor of Afro-American literature at Pennsylvania college, Susan Blake offers a lively account of the 1983-84 academic year she spent teaching in Lome, Togo, based on letters to her family and friends. Blake found herself confronting a Third World educational system with an entrenched bureaucracy, but little access to books, paper and photocopy machines. The resulting memoir is vivid and affectionate, but the most interesting chapters focus on the reactions of two generations of African women to the novel “The Color Purple.” The reader finds himself wishing Blake had included more of her students’ thoughts and less gossip about the expatriate community she found in Lome.

JURASSIC PARK, by Michael Crichton (Ballantine: $5.99). Crichton brings the skills that have made him the master of the airport novel to this turgid tale of re-created dinosaurs running amok on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. The author’s background as a scientist enables him to posit an ingenious method of restoring dinosaurs to life through the reconstruction of fossil DNA and cloning. Unfortunately, nothing in the story matches the originality of the premise, and a promising adventure quickly devolves into a long, predictable potboiler. At times, Chrichton seems to trip over his own predictions: The big game hunter/keeper complains that chemicals don’t work reliably on dinosaur metabolisms, but two species hunt by spitting poisons--which act quickly on humans. Why would dinosaurs develop an effective way of attacking large mammals that wouldn’t evolve for nearly 50 million years?

BEAUTIES, BEASTS AND ENCHANTMENT: Classic French Fairy Tales, translated with an introduction by Jack Zipes (Meridian: $14.95, illustrated). The most popular versions of many classic fairy tales were written by 17th-Century French authors: A new translation based on these sources is long overdue, but Zipes’ awkward renditions add precious little to this special literature. In the introduction, he complains that the 19th-Century translations by John Robinson Planche he used as a starting point were “too anachronistic,” yet his own versions creak with archaic terms. When one of Cinderella’s step-sisters announces that for the prince’s ball, “je mettrai mon manteau a fleurs d’or,” Zipes translates the phrase as “I’ll put on my gold-flowered mantua,” rather than more readily comprehensible “cloak” or “cape.” His approach is generally too literal minded--the pages of this collection are littered with the ruins of French sentences rendered into stilted English, but he calls Charles Perrault’s tale “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” although “La Belle au Bois Dormant” actually means “The Beauty of the Sleeping Forest.” Viewers curious about the origins of the new Disney film will discover a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” that seems stiffer and more old-fashioned than the original English version that appeared in The Young Misses Magazine in 1783.

AIDS: Trading Fears for Facts by Karen Hein, Theresa Foy Digeronimo and the editors of Consumer Reports Books (Consumer Reports: $4.95, illustrated). Originally published in 1989, this concise, straightforward guide for teens has been updated to include recent discoveries about the pandemic that has already claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans. As the number of HIV-infected teen-agers continues to rise with appalling rapidity, Hein and Digeronimo show how informed young people can avoid both the disease and needless fears. Their no-nonsense approach stresses the need for knowledge: how the disease can and can’t be spread; how to treat people who have contracted it with understanding and compassion, rather than fear or hostility. Although they emphasize that abstinence is the only totally sure way to avoid the sexual transmission of the virus, the authors acknowledge that it may not be a realistic choice for some individuals and present an explanation of how to use a condom that could offend only the most rock-ribbed conservatives. Parents who feel uncomfortable discussing these issues with their teen-age children should present them with a copy of this book. Where AIDS is concerned, ignorance is not bliss--it can be fatal.

THE 1992 INFORMATION PLEASE ENVIRONMENTAL ALMANAC, compiled by the World Resources Institute, Allen Hammond, editor-in-chief (Houghton Mifflin: $9.95, illustrated). More than 600 pages long, this hefty volume combines a series of essays on specific topics--water, food, waste, energy, etc.--with a compilation of relevant statistics for each state and country. There are some scattered bits of good news: California receives the highest ratings for food safety programs, resource and energy management and policies concerning the use of pesticides. But the state scores badly in other areas, especially air quality. (Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana rank 61, 62 and 64, respectively, on the Index of 64 “Green Cities.”) The data on erosion, soil and water degradation, the destruction of the rain forests and the numbers of endangered animals and plants reveal the extent of the havoc humans have wreacked on the planet.

ALL THE LITTLE LIVE THINGS, by Wallace Stegner (Penguin: $8.95). The sequel to Wallace’s novel “The Spectator Bird” continues the saga of retired literary agent Joe Allston. Allston and his wife live in vaguely dissatisfied comfort in the San Francisco Bay Area, until their tranquility is shattered by two invaders: Jim Peck, a self-styled hippie guru whom Allston dismisses as “Caliban,” and Marian Catlin, a gentle, loving young woman, who alternately assumes the roles of Ariel and Miranda. Allston soon discovers his impotence as Prospero: Despite the plethora of words he commands, he possesses neither charms to protect his loved ones nor spells to subdue the agents of chaos and darkness. His dislike of the aimless, irresponsible Peck and his affection for Catlin bring into relief his troubled relationship with his own son who died many years ago, probably by suicide. Stegner paints a moving portrait of an embittered man who retains the ability to grow and learn from his sorrows.

THE LEFT BANK 1: Writing and Fishing in the Northwest, edited by Linny Stovall (Blue Heron Publishing: $7.95, illustrated). The premier issue of this semiannual literary journal focuses on authors and topics relating to the Pacific Northwest. Wallace Stegner reflects genially on the prose of Norman Maclean, while science fiction writer Greg Baer considers the current state of his genre. John Keeble reports on Exxon’s ineffectual strategy for containing the oil spill in Prince William Sound; Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi denounce the Canadian government’s mistreatment of citizens of Japanese ancestry during WW II in sharply focused essays. Some of the articles fall short of this level of excellence: Sharon Doubiago’s self-indulgent attempt to write about herself writing seems neither funny nor profound, and Mary Clearman Blew does little more than whine about her past rejection slips. Dennis Cunningham’s handsome woodcuts and Jacqueline Moreau’s photographs of river people lend visual elegance. (Individual copies: $7.95, plus $1.50 shipping and handling; subscriptions $14 per year, postage included: Blue Heron Publishing, 24450 N.W. Hansen Road, Hillsboro, OR 97124.)